He locked it.
The action reminded me of Casso. Terror speared down my back. I went to the opposite side of the bed, as far away from him I could get in the tiny room. My hands trembled, my heart hammering in my chest. At this moment, I feared him more than I ever had Casso.
“I wrote to you when I got there just like I promised. Every day I scribbled out a letter. I got them all back with a ‘return to sender’ written in permanent ink.”
“What?”
He rounded the bed, contempt in his eyes. “When I got phone privileges, I called you weekly to find out why the fuck you were ignoring me!” His voice boomed, rattling the walls. “But you wouldn’t accept the goddamn collect calls.”
I shook my head, pressing my back into the wall, wishing it would swallow me up.
“I never imagined my sweet Snow could be such a mean bitch. You destroyed me.” He spat the words like poison.
The tears I fought to hold back streamed down my face. Zach slashed through my heart, gutting me from the inside out. “I never got any letters,” I cried.
How could he accuse me of returning letters I never received?
“Liar!”
I couldn’t take the hate in his eyes. I shook my head, wholly undone. “It’s the truth. Every day, Jill said nothing came.” When Zach had left, my dad was looking for a new home to rent. I didn’t know where we’d move to, so I told him to send the letters to his house so Jill could give them to me.
He heaved in buckets of air. I could almost hear the wheels turning in his head.
I placed my hand on my chest as I remembered what Jill had told me. “A couple of weeks after you left, she confessed to overhearing you brag about all the sex you’d get. She said it was better to just forget about you.” I couldn’t breathe, recalling it all. “I was so heartbroken. Totally devastated, so I refused the calls.”
He dragged his hands down his cheeks. “But I did fucking write. Every goddamn day I wrote to you.” Why did he repeat himself? Did he think it mattered after cheating on me?
“In between screwing girls, no less!”
“Fuck!” He grabbed my face firmly in his hands.
I held back a scream and closed my eyes, refusing to let him break me. Why was he pushing this? So much time had passed, none of it mattered anymore.
“Look at me.” He stepped closer. I felt the heat radiating off him as I inhaled his intoxicating scent. “I didn’t mean any of that. It was just stupid talk. Guys being guys. I’d never cheat on you. I loved you. We were engaged to be married.”
A sob ripped from my throat. “No, Jill said—”
“I don’t give a fuck what Jill said. You fucking shattered me, baby.”
“No,youshattered me.”
Wait.
He just called me baby.
“Please let me in,” Jill shouted, jiggling the knob. “I’m so sorry. Boxer, I couldn’t let you cheat on her. She was my best friend.” She banged on the door. “Don’t you get it? You were too young to be in love and talk about marriage. Aspen was supposed to go to college with me.”
Zach and I stared at each other in disbelief. It was as if Jill had sucked the oxygen from our lungs. My mind whirled like a funnel cloud, trying to process what this all meant. The look in Zach’s eyes, sadness and anger, they made my brain stumble over itself.
Jill was relentless, knocking on the door, “Please let me in!”
Zach and I were apart all these years because of Jill?
He relaxed his hands on my face but didn’t remove them. His gentle touch slowed my racing heart, wiped away my fear. “You never got the letters I mailed home?”
“N, no.” My body shook, my lips trembling. “Not one of them.”
He pressed his forehead to mine. “Jesus Christ. If you’re telling me the truth. All the years I spent hating you. Not being with you, fuck.”